Many might notice a movie called “The Wedding”/Svadba on the list at their local cinema and be drawn to its advertised genre of comedy! But be warned – there is nothing humorous about a movie that is, in essence, a pathetic attempt to redeem as acceptable the Serbs who had engaged in genocidal aggression against Croatia during the 1990s. There is nothing humorous about attempts to justify or minimise genocidal aggression of one ethnic group against another.

In Psychology, about which I know quite a bit as I am one, when one comes across someone using humour as a shield that covers up or attempts to trivialise the grotesque past of someone, then that prolongs, even avoids, the requirement for atonement as well as for accountability for those grotesque deeds.  While the effect of the newly released film „Wedding“ (Svadba) may have surfaced to most as a satire or comedy, it deeply wounds those who are Croatian patriots who suffered greatly under the Serb and Yugoslav Army’s barbaric aggression in recent history.

This recently released film that has reportedly broken box-office records of all time in Croatia and Serbia, portrays a rivalry between the two neighbours, Croatia, Serbia, touching upon Bosnia and Herzegovina, that has apparently been in existence for a long time, and becomes somewhat like comedy gold, which has audiences in both countries laughing at themselves. In the movie, when two students in London tell their families back home that they are going to get married, it should be one of the happiest moments of their lives. But there’s a catch – she is Croatian, and he is Serbian. The young couple’s families are horrified by the looming “mixed marriage”.

The Croatian-Serbian co-production mocks stereotypes of the two peoples who share a similar language, but who ended up fighting in a bloody war in the 1990s when Yugoslavia, the country they shared for generations, collapsed. The problem with this description of the film is that Serbs and Croats did not end up fighting a bloody war. The fact is that Serbs were the genocidal aggressors, and Croatia had to defend itself and fight for the survival of its own people.

The tragedy is also that The Wedding is a project funded by Croatian money, yet, scandalously, with messages deeply rooted in Yugoslav propaganda. The film actually exposes how old ideological deceptions, cultural hierarchies, and the well-known matrix of humiliation are being pushed again through would-be satire and art – and the Croatian taxpayer paid for it! Yet another heart-wrenching example of the Croatian Minister for Culture and Media, Nina Obuljen Korzinek’s anti-Croatian and anti-truth decisions about how to spend taxpayers’ money.

Looking further into the film’s grit, one cannot help but sense an annoying, if not alarming, push for Serbian superiority. Just as it used to be in communist Yugoslavia. In this film, a Serb again marries a Croat, not vice versa, because Serbs are “real men,” the young man’s father is a government minister, and the girl’s father is a newly formed entrepreneur; therefore, Serbs are gentlemen and the government, and Croats are peasants.

Furthermore, the movie evidently portrays Herzegovinian (Croatian) women as primitive and vulgar, including the allegation that she “curses the blood of Jesus.”

Furthermore, the biased political leanings against Croats in this film can be seen when on the Serbian side, the grandmother calls her future in-laws “Ustashas”, a slur alluding to Croatia’s World War II pro-Nazi regime, and yet there is no mention of “Chetniks”, a slur alluding Serbia’s World War II pro-Nazi regime that actually made itself one of the first “Judenfrei” (Jew Free) countries in Europe by May 1942.

Considering the rather recent history of Serbian aggression against the Croatian people, which only thirty years ago resulted in rivers of Croatian bloodshed, ethnic cleansing of Croats from their homes, I was waiting for this film to say something about tolerance, forgiveness, peace and love, but nothing of that!

Plenty of racial insults, as well as stereotyping, though.  Indeed, the content offends the religious and national feelings of religious believers. Anyone of Croatian origin, in particular, who thinks this movie is great is not about to earn any “brownie points” from me or from many others for that matter. Ina Vukic